CCRI suspends planned January term amid faculty union opposition

G. Wayne Miller Journal Staff Writer gwaynemiller

Wednesday

Nov 8, 2017 at 10:55 AMNov 8, 2017 at 3:50 PM

WARWICK, R.I. — Faced with opposition from faculty union leadership, Community College of Rhode Island president Meghan Hughes on Wednesday morning temporarily suspended registration for a planned new January term that would have allowed CCRI students an opportunity to earn extra credits.

Modeled after similar “compressed” courses already established at the University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College, and community colleges in many other states, the so-called “J-term” offerings are seen by Hughes and her administration as a way to improve the school’s 5-percent two-year graduation rate, which lags behind similar schools elsewhere in the United States.

The three-week J term, Hughes asserts, is also necessary to meet the legislative requirements of the state’s free-tuition scholarship program for CCRI, the Rhode Island Promise.

“Everybody benefits from the J term,” Hughes said. “It matters for the Rhode Island Promise students and it matters for all of our students.”

“The college has unilaterally decided to offer courses in developmental math, developmental English, a course in human anatomy, all very difficult courses to accomplish in 15 weeks, let alone three weeks,” he said.

“The faculty who teach these courses tell me that to try to compress them into three weeks is academically unsound. They have similar J terms at other colleges, but our student population is very different than those other colleges. And we want to do what’s best for our students.”

Hughes counters that long experience at other community colleges has demonstrated the success of “three-week intense offerings. The completion rates from around the country are higher than the traditional term,” she said.

She also disputed Murray’s contention that the J term was “unilaterally” planned and scheduled, calling that assertion “fundamentally incorrect.” She said CCRI Vice President for Academic Affairs Rosemary Costigan, who led the planning, “worked with the [department] chairs to design the J term, including the courses that would be offered.”

In a communication Wednesday morning to the CCRI community announcing the suspension, Costigan wrote that “academic leadership engaged frequently with our faculty while planning the Winter Session.” She stated that “on more than one occasion” she invited Murray to discuss the J term, but that he “declined to schedule a meeting.”

Last month, the faculty union “made a request to bargain. On Oct. 26, we met and delivered a proposal that reiterated our position that participation was voluntary and limited to full-time faculty who would be compensated at the overload rate for teaching, which would not count against the overload cap. I have yet to receive a response to this proposal.”

The “overload,” or overtime rate, according to CRI, is $87.50 an hour. Several teachers had agreed to teach in the J term until Murray posted his video and subsequently called two faculty meetings, after which the teachers backed out, according to Costigan’s Wednesday communication.

“Because just this week faculty have withdrawn from teaching in the Session, we currently lack a sufficient number of instructors to run it,” Costigan wrote.

According to Hughes, the proposal “was this is voluntary, it will not affect your standing, will not affect your spring ‘overload.’ So this is completely voluntary. Should you choose to earn extra money in January, you will be paid at the ‘overload’ rate.”

Hughes told The Journal: “My hope is that union leadership responds to our vice president’s proposal and that we can move a program forward that is proven both in Connecticut and in Massachusetts and all over the United States to serve community college students — all of them, including developmental students — well.

“I fundamentally believe that our faculty believe in educating our students, that care about graduating our students, and this is the way to do it.”

Late Wednesday afternoon, Murray issued a statement saying "we appreciate that President Hughes acknowledged the faculty’s concerns regarding a J-Term at CCRI and has agreed to suspend the proposal" and noting that the union "filed an unfair labor practice against CCRI on October 25" for what it alleges was a violation of its contract.

“As the faculty of this college," Murray wrote, "we refuse to put our students’ education at risk in order to fulfill a political promise.”

The J term dispute follows a summer protest against the Hughes administration led by Murray, some other teachers and some students. Among the concerns then were what Murray described as “a lack of communication and shared governance between the administration and the faculty, the staff and the students.”

— gwmiller@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7380

On Twitter: @GWayneMiller

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